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Garden Design Services available from Kathy Vivian, Garden Designer

Whether the garden is large or small, urban or in the country, we can produce a garden design to suit the unique requirements of you and your family, that complement your house and surroundings. There is a range of services that we can provide, depending on your needs.

Garden advice and consultancy.

Garden design, which could be the design of the layout of the whole garden or just part of a garden. This includes the placement of paths and paving, steps and structures such as retaining walls and pergolas.

Planting design for a whole garden or part of a garden, recommending plants and where to plant them.

Sourcing and acquiring the plants for you and carrying out the planting, including preparing the soil beforehand.

Garden consultancy

Not everyone needs a full garden design for their outdoor space. Sometimes a garden owner simply needs ideas and inspiration that they can then work through themselves.

Some of the issues that a garden consultancy might explore are:

Dealing with awkward shapes and slopes.

Ideas to make a garden more interesting or to make the space work better for the client’s needs.

Cost-effective improvements to prepare a garden for a house sale.

Help those who have just moved in to realize the full potential of their new garden.

Specialist planting for difficult situations, such as dry shade and exposed sites.

Planning for a garden wedding.

Advice in keeping the costs down for your garden project.

Ideas to make your garden more wildlife-friendly.

We offer two levels of consultancy service:

Part-day consultancy

This is the simplest service, where we look at the garden with the client and discuss issues they are having, suggesting ideas of how to deal with problems and producing a simple bullet-point report as a record of what was discussed. This service costs £75 for 1.5 hours.

Full-day consultancy

This takes a whole day and starts with a site meeting with the client, then 3 to 4 hours of on-site investigation and follow-up research. After the visit you will receive a detailed written report as a reference document to support all aspects of the meeting, site observations and research. This service costs £250 for the day.

Please note that if the site is over 20 miles from the Uxbridge office, expenses will be charged for traveling time and mileage.

If a planting design or garden design is requested after a consultancy session, a discount will be applied to the cost of the design.

The garden design process

This involves a series of stages, tailored to suit your needs. If a new layout for the whole garden including hard landscaping (paving, etc) is required, the stages will generally include:

Initial meeting with the garden designer. This involves inspecting the site and its surroundings, and discussing what you would like from your new garden and the garden design services provided. It is a good idea for you to think beforehand about how you would like to use your garden. It is also helpful to think about anything you’d love to see in your ideal garden, and also anything that you’d hate to see there. If you can, try to collect pictures that help to illustrate your ideal garden. If you already have any plans of the site, it would be useful to have a copy available for the meeting.

The initial meeting is free. After the meeting I will provide you with a quotation, along with a written client brief.

The survey. This involves taking measurements of the site, examining the condition of the soil, and assessing the possibilities and features of the site. If the site is large or complex, a survey by a professional surveyor may be required.

Draft plan. I will present to you my initial ideas using a pencil plan and outline sketches and we discuss any amendments to my design.

Final plan.

If you also require a planting design, or if this is the only service required, this process includes:

Initial meeting – similar to above, but not required if this was covered in the initial layout meeting.

The survey – similar to above. Again, this is not necessary if our plan was used for the garden layout.

Draft plan.

Final plan.

Personalised maintenance instructions for caring for the new plants in your garden.